“Eddie!” she cried.
He knew something was badly wrong. He wasn’t sure he had ever heard his wife sound that frightened. He shoved himself out from under the car, looked up at her, and asked, “What is it?”
“Something’s wrong at the mall,” she said as she stared down at him with a horrified expression on her face. “Something blew up, and now they’re shooting people out there!”
All of a sudden, Eddie couldn’t seem to get his breath, but he had enough air left to say, “Calvin.”
Then a crushing pain slammed into his chest, almost as if the jack had given out and the car had fallen on him.
* * *
Walt Graham had his shoes off, his feet up, and a cup of coffee in his hand as he sat back to watch a college football game on TV, one of several that would be on today. As the first one up, it had an early kickoff time.
He didn’t want to be disturbed, but he couldn’t turn off his cell phone. It wasn’t allowed. Theoretically, he was on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
He didn’t even get the 366th day off, every four years.
So when the cell phone buzzed as it lay on the table next to his big comfortable chair, Graham wasn’t surprised. He didn’t sigh, didn’t moan, didn’t curse his bad luck.
Chances were, somebody somewhere was having lots worse luck, he knew, or else he wouldn’t be getting a call.
He reached for the phone.
“Graham.”
“Sorry to bother you, Walt.”
Graham recognized the voice of the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI office in Kansas City, where he was posted currently. He said, “That’s all right, Gerald. You need me?”
“I need you to get on a plane to Springfield, Illinois. I’ll have one waiting for you.”
“Springfield?” Graham frowned. “I haven’t seen anything on TV—”
“We’re trying to keep a lid on it nationally, but if that lasts for another ten minutes I’ll be surprised. There’s trouble at the American Way Mall in Springfield.”
Graham sat up, placed the coffee cup on the table where the phone had been lying, and asked, “An attack?”
“Shots fired and an explosion of some sort. Men with automatic weapons. In one of the biggest malls in the country, on the most crowded shopping day of the year.” The voice on the other end paused. “You can see why I called you.”
This time, Graham couldn’t help but sigh. His reputation followed him wherever he went, even though he tried to keep a low profile these days. That business in Texas a few years earlier, and his involvement in it, had angered a lot of people higher up the ladder than him, not only in the Bureau but in other parts of the government as well. He’d heard rumors that he had been cussed roundly in the Oval Office itself.
Of course, the person who had occupied the office then was gone, and there had been several presidents since, although none of them had been any improvement as far as Graham was concerned.
“That Black Friday business down there didn’t win me any friends,” Graham told his boss. “The administration would have just as soon tried to cover it all up. In some circles I’ve been trying to live down that day ever since.”
“You helped save the lives of a lot of people, Walt. There are plenty of us who haven’t forgotten that. And hell, you’ve got experience at something like this. That has to count for something.”
“That counts,” Graham admitted grimly. He stood up. “I’ll be on that plane.”
“I knew you would be.”
“Does Washington know about this yet?”
“They’re just about to,” Graham’s boss said, and now his voice was equally grim.
Chapter 27
It hadn’t taken long for Habib to realize that he should have recruited more men. The mall had too many entrances, too many ways for the hated infidels to escape.
His men had shot up the room next to the security office where all the closed circuit camera feeds were located, and that had proven to be an unwise move as well since the cameras would have come in handy for keeping track of what was going on. It was difficult to rein in the men’s enthusiasm, though, when they had guns in their hands and jihad in their hearts.
All of them carried burner phones they used to communicate with him, and by the time a half-hour had passed since the initial attack, Habib knew that some of the Americans had gotten past his men in three different places. They could only estimate the number who had escaped at around a few hundred.
But considering that close to a thousand of the infidels were dead already, that meant he still had hundreds of living hostages. That was plenty to keep the American authorities from storming the place.
He stood where he could look out one of the glass-doored entrances, staying well back because he was sure the police probably had snipers out there already with their rifles trained on all the doors, each hoping to catch a glimpse of a terrorist so he could take a shot that might make him a hero, at least to the perverted Western media.
Flashing red and blue lights filled Habib’s angle of vision from here. Emergency vehicles ringed the outer edge of the parking lot all the way around the mall. Habib’s men had reported that to him. They were surrounded.
Which, of course, was exactly what he had expected. In truth, what he had hoped for.
Some of the members of the Sword of the Prophet had fooled themselves into believing that they would get away after striking this blow for Allah, but Habib had always known there was no hope of that. Anyway, wasn’t it better to become a martyr in a holy cause than to live?
The mall was quiet now. No shooting, and only an occasional whimper from the groups of hostages crowded into blind corners and small shops, approximately a hundred in each group so that two men with automatic weapons could control them.
In the near silence, when Habib listened closely, he would hear the whup-whup-whup of helicopter blades as aircraft circled over the mall. He had expected that, too. Those helicopters belonged to the news media and were sending out pictures of the mall to the rest of the world.
At this point, the Americans didn’t know the details of what had happened inside the mall, but they knew it was bad, very bad. Soon, the helicopters would have to leave when Homeland Security or the FBI declared the area around the mall to be a no-fly zone. Speculation would grow. Nerves would stretch tighter.
Let them, Habib thought with a smile. Let the Americans suffer as they wondered how many of their loved ones had died already, and how many would die before this bloody day was over.
Habib would end that speculation soon, but not yet. Not yet.
Mujidan Bashir hurried up to him. With the glorious death of Mahmoud Assouri, Bashir had become Habib’s second-in-command. He’d been resentful because he had wanted the job of blowing up the escalators and all the Americans on them, but Habib knew he was a good, dependable man anyway.
“Our losses stand at eight men killed and five more wounded,” Bashir reported. Habib had sent him to find out how many casualties they’d had so far. Bashir went on worriedly, “We don’t have enough men left. We should have brought more.”
Habib had been thinking the exact same thing a few moments earlier, but he wasn’t going to admit that to Bashir.
“We’re fine,” he snapped. “Have all the pockets of resistance been wiped out?”
When Habib’s men had opened fire, among their first targets had been the police officers stationed inside the mall, along with all the hired security guards who were armed, even if they carried only stun guns or batons. Those Americans had been wiped out quickly and efficiently.
Some of the civilians had been armed, though, and foolishly had fought back. Small caliber revolvers and semi-automatic pistols had been no match for Steyrs, however, and the would-be defenders had been killed or wounded and disarmed in short order.
“Except for the sports store,” Bashir replied sullenly to Habib’s question.
“Sporting goods,” H
abib corrected him. He prided himself on his English being perfect. It had helped him blend in until the time came to strike in the name of Allah.
“Whatever,” Bashir muttered, sounding like an American himself. “We have shot out all the glass at the front of the store, but every time we try to approach, gunfire from inside drives us back.”
That cursed place! All the time Habib had spent considering every angle of the attack, and he had failed to take into proper account that there would be an abundance of weapons in that store.
He had known they sold guns there, of course, but he had counted on the men he placed there being able to keep the Americans from getting their hands on the weapons. Everyone should have been herded out into the mall proper before any sort of resistance could be mounted.
But obviously, something had gone wrong. He should have placed more men, or better men, or both inside the store. They should have been more ruthless.
Honestly, Habib hadn’t believed that the Americans would be brave enough, or quick-witted enough, to turn those surroundings to their advantage.
“How many of the infidels can possibly be in there?” he asked Bashir now. “A dozen? Two dozen?”
“If there are two dozen, we now outnumber them less than four to one,” Bashir replied grimly.
Habib waved away that concern and said, “But we have hundreds of hostages. If need be, we will kill a few of them and force the holdouts to surrender. In the meantime, we keep them bottled up there. If we cannot get in, neither can they get out.”
Bashir nodded.
“I will pass along your commands, Habib,” he said. “And it matters not, I suppose, whether one group of infidels dies now or dies later. In the end, they will all die.”
“Yes,” Habib said, nodding solemnly. “In the end, they will all die.”
* * *
Tobey hadn’t planned on being in charge of anything, but since everybody in the store seemed to be looking to him to make the decisions, he figured he’d better determine exactly what the situation was, and what resources, human and otherwise, he had to work with.
They were in good shape on guns and ammo. They had enough to deal with a siege lasting for days, maybe even longer.
Food was a different story. According to the store manager, who Tobey quickly located, there was an employee break room with a small refrigerator in it, but it didn’t contain much to eat.
Plenty of water was available, at least for now, from the faucets in the store’s restrooms.
Tobey ran through all that information quickly in his mind, then realized that other than the guns and ammunition, the rest of it was completely irrelevant. There wasn’t going to be a siege lasting for days. Those madmen weren’t the type for long, drawn-out confrontations. The lust for infidel blood was too strong in them to allow that.
Nor would the authorities wait that long. They would assault the mall with SWAT teams or Special Forces units or some other sort of tactical squad before this mess was allowed to stretch out for days.
Tobey figured, realistically speaking, they were looking at a matter of hours—no more than twenty-four—before all hell broke loose. Nobody was going to die of thirst or starvation in that time.
Yeah, that was the least of their worries.
Next on the agenda was a head-count of the defenders. There were 127 people in the store, Tobey found, but 35 of them were kids below the age of fifteen. That left 92 adults and older teenagers, 60 female and 32 male.
That wasn’t an issue as far as Tobey was concerned. He expected the women to fight alongside the men if necessary, some of them, anyway. And not all the men were exactly warriors.
As he looked around, though, he thought he ought to be able to muster around seventy-five people who were willing and at least somewhat able to put up a fight. All of the store’s employees claimed some degree of proficiency with firearms, and at least half of the customers had had varying levels of experience handling guns, including a couple of dozen veterans like Pete McCracken.
The hoodie kid, whose name was Aaron Ellis, had already traded shots with some of the terrorists while rescuing his sister Jennie and her friend Holly. Calvin Marshall, the young security guard, had fired a gun only a few times in his life, but he struck Tobey as the sort who’d be a quick study, and Calvin was willing to do whatever was necessary, too. The way he’d tackled one of the terrorists proved that. Pete, the old-timer, was probably too feeble to do much, but Tobey gave him a .22 pistol anyway, figuring he might be able to handle the lighter weight.
Pete had glared at the gun, saying, “A .22? If I . . . shoot anybody with that . . . it’ll just make ’em mad. I could . . . do more damage . . . throwin’ the damn pistol . . . at ’em.”
“Put enough .22 rounds in somebody, it’ll slow ’em down,” Tobey had assured the old man. “Hit them in the right place and it’ll knock them out of the fight for good.”
“I . . . suppose so. Still rather have . . . a 9mm . . . or a .45.”
Then there were the ones like Father Steve, who absolutely refused to take one of the guns.
“My conscience just won’t allow me to kill another human being,” he told Tobey.
“Not even to save your life or someone else’s life?” Tobey had a hard time wrapping his head around how anybody could be that much of a pacifist. If somebody’s brain functioned well enough to let them walk and talk, how could they not comprehend that sometimes violence, even fatal violence, was justified?
“No, I’m afraid I’d die before I could do such a thing,” the priest insisted. “To take a life is to interfere with God’s plan.”
“So you’re saying it’s God’s plan for you to stand by and do nothing while those terrorists slaughter even more people?”
Father Steve glared at him and said, “You don’t understand.”
“No, Father, I sure as hell don’t,” Tobey said as he turned away. He didn’t bother trying to keep the disgust he felt out of his voice as he spoke.
All this happened quickly, during the first half-hour of the standoff. The terrorists continued sniping at the store, sending bullets through the grating on the pull-down gate and shooting the windows until the damage was more than the spiderwebbed glass could stand and they collapsed under their own weight.
By the time that happened, Tobey had twenty men and five women positioned behind the counter at the back of the store. Displays of merchandise had been shoved aside by men who had risked being hit by ricochets from the terrorist potshots in order to create firing lanes between the counter and the entrance. The defenders were armed mostly with rifles and shotguns, with fully loaded handguns in easy reach in case there was any close quarters fighting to be done.
Tobey expected the terrorists to charge the store as soon as the big windows went down, and that’s what they did. Men appeared, spraying lead in front of them from the machine pistols, but the defenders didn’t panic. Tobey had told them that the most important thing they could do was to remain cool and steady. They returned the fire, not rushing but keeping up a firm resistance, and within moments the terrorists withdrew.
“Did you . . . get any of ’em?” Pete asked. He hadn’t taken part in the shooting.
“They didn’t leave any bodies behind,” Tobey told the old-timer. “We must’ve winged a few of them, though.”
“Get ’em . . . next time. There’ll be . . . a next time . . . you know. The Krauts kept comin’ at us . . . at Bastogne.”
“Yeah, I know,” Tobey said. “I’ve read about that battle, and seen the movies about it, too.”
“What are you . . . gonna tell the bastards . . . if they ask you . . . to surrender?”
Tobey grinned and said, “Nuts.”
Pete gave him a thumbs-up with his good hand.
Tobey moved over to where Calvin knelt behind the counter, holding an AR-15.
“You did good,” Tobey said. “You handled that gun like a pro.”
“Yeah, I doubt that,” Calvin said with a ruef
ul smile. “I couldn’t seem to get the bullets to go where I wanted them to go. At least I kept it pointed in the right direction, though.”
“Sometimes that’s all there is to it.”
Aaron was all the way down at the other end of the counter, as far away from Pete McCracken as he could get. Tobey hadn’t taken the time to find out the story behind the hostility between Aaron and the old man, and under the circumstances he wasn’t sure it mattered.
Normally, he wouldn’t have liked the looks of Aaron. The kid was a punk, as Pete called him. He reminded Tobey of some of the guys he had gone to school with, the ones who spent most of the time high and were involved in all sorts of shady things. Aaron just reeked of “petty criminal.”
On the other hand, he had risked his life to help his sister and her friend, and he had killed a couple of the terrorists. That excused some of his personal failings as far as Tobey was concerned.
“You’re pretty good with that Browning,” Tobey told him now.
“Yeah, I never used one until today. Nice gun.” Aaron hefted the Hi-Power, now fully reloaded, and looked toward the other end of the counter. “I guess I’ll have to give it back to the old geezer once this is all over.”
“Well, it is his gun.”
“We’ll worry about it then, right?” Aaron said. Tobey heard the bleak tone in his voice and couldn’t argue with it.
Right now it didn’t make sense to worry about anything except sheer survival.
More shots blasted just then as the terrorists tried for a second time to get into the store. Tobey knelt beside Aaron and used the Steyr he had taken off one of the dead men. Gunfire roared all along the counter as the defenders fought back.
For a long moment, the air was filled with flying lead going in both directions. Stray bullets hit a stack of ice chests and blew them apart in an explosion of brightly colored plastic. A display of mugs emblazoned with hunting logos met the same fate. One of the defenders behind the counter fell backward, blood welling from a shoulder wound. The racket inside the store was deafening.
Then it ended abruptly as the terrorists pulled back again, unable to stand up to the firestorm any longer.
Black Friday Page 17